Tag: community

Competition for the best graffiti has come to the international stage at the ProJam Competition. The Graffiti ProJam is a gathering held in Mexico City, Mexico where the most talented graffiti and street artists come out and strut their best stuff. It’s a time to show the world that graffiti is a legitimate, widely accepted art form. It’s an opportunity to see and to be seen.

Not only artists show up at ProJam, but representatives from community governments, private galleries, small and large businesses are all in attendance. They are there to surmise how artists in this very trendy genre can be influential in their business. Locally run and family owned concerns like plumbing services in Kansas City MO to large titans of industry like Goodyear Tire and Rubber, come in to see how this unique, one of a kind portrayal of society can be used to promote their products and services.

Graffiti has evolved in unimaginable ways over the last two decades. Street art, which has its roots in graffiti, was once thought of as defaming, but has become one of the fastest growing art forms within an age old mien. Just as Steampunk was spawned from the traditional and classical expressions to become totally unique, so has the language of graffiti.

Does a particular form of art ever really come totally into its own? Who’s to say when there is no end to the ways we express ourselves? Hamilton Catering Company is a great example of this. There are as many ways to conjure a work of art as there are people to express it. Seven billion personalities on the planet means seven billion individual views. If each could express itself in the art world we would have just as many different interpretations.

When you think of graffiti do you think of gang tags and an inappropriate invasion of space? Without question, graffiti is found most frequently in the underprivileged sections of town more so than the upper middle class neighborhoods. Although none are immune if the opportunity presents itself – say at 3 a.m. to a passerby who just happens to be in possession of a spray can or two of paint.

What is the drive behind graffiti? Why is there a need to express an impulse that is continually demonstrated outside the confines of respect for personal space? My cousin Joe, an all-around handyman, told me he was on a water heater repair job and found graffiti in the basement of a customer’s house in the burbs. A testimonial that graffiti can show up in just about any space where there is enough room to make a statement.